“When shall we three meet again?” as the ladies say at the start of Macbeth. Here are the same conductor, the same producer and the same recording engineer making a live recording of the same symphony they had already successfully recorded in the same hall with the same orchestra five years earlier. In the circumstances, I would not be surprised to learn that it was the same audience. There cannot be all that many people in Hamburg for whom Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony is the perfect evening out.
Wand’s grip on the symphony in that earlier 1988 Hamburg recording is remarkable; and it was gutsily played, too, in the context of a strong, rather forward recording. The newer version seems calmer, quieter, and rather more inward-looking. The recording is less immediate, the orchestral sound more lambent. In the earlier movements I was reminded of Karajan’s famously beautiful and introspective 1971 Berlin recording of the Seventh Symphony (EMI, 6/89). It is as if Wand, too, is now seeking out the Holy Grail of a perfect Bruckner sound. Unfortunately, this, or some temporary slackening of his or the orchestra’s powers, produces a reading of the important and elusive finale that is a good deal less gripping than in the 1989 performance.
As to current preferences, at the time I thought Wand’s 1988 recording a formidable rival to the famous old Klemperer version. Now I am not so sure, principally because I am no longer entirely clear how Wand views the symphony. The newer version comes almost as a rebuke to its distinguished predecessor, a rebuke I don’t think the predecessor wholly deserves.'